The LORD is my Banner

I wonder what it would have been like to have been a wandering shepherd in the deserts of the Sinai Peninsula about 3000 years ago. Imagine riding a camel across the barren wastes, moving your sheep from one hidden spring to the next--springs too small to support more than a few dozen animals. Suddenly, as you cross over a small, rocky ridge, you are shocked to discover, winding from one horizon to the next, a broad, trampled highway in the sand--the tracks of thousands upon thousands of men, women, children, and their animals. Startled, you ride closer. As you approach, this out-of-place highway begins to appear stranger still as you start to notice that the path is strewn with quail bones and bread crumbs. Dismounting to study the tracks, you observe splotches in the sand where water has been spilled. Looking around you see, fifteen feet away, lying in a small trough in the ground, a sword--an Amalekite sword. There has been a battle, and the losers have left their weapons on the ground and fled. Who are these people? Where did they get all this food? Where did they get so much water that they could afford to spill it on the ground? The nearest major water source is two weeks' ride south of here! How did they manage to defeat the Amalekites on their home turf? Something strange is going on in the Sinai deserts.

The Israelites' experience in the desert was far from normal. Deep in the wilderness, they are being forced to rely on God to meet their most basic needs. When they needed water, they were forced to depend on God to provide it. When they needed food, they had no alternative but to turn to God. When they were attacked by enemy forces, including the Amalekites, they only achieved victory by the hand of the Lord. And the amazing thing, the really beautiful thing, is that each day they awakened to find bread from heaven on the ground, and each evening the Lord drove flocks of quail into the camp. Each time they needed water, God gave them all they needed, and God gave them the victory in the battles they fought. Slowly, painstakingly, in the crucible of the deep desert, where there is no food and no water and no military help other than what was provided by the Lord, the Israelites were learning that they served a God who could and would provide for them. And when Moses, overjoyed at the defeat of the Amalekites, built an altar to God and named it "The LORD is my banner," he was proclaiming what the rest of the nation was only just beginning to realize--that it was the Lord's strength behind the victory, and it was the Lord who was providing for His people.

In a country of supermarkets and clean tap water and peace it is sometimes difficult for us to understand what it would be like to daily rely on the Lord for food and water and protection from our enemies. I wonder sometimes if we could stand to learn the same lessons the Israelites were being taught out in the desert--that God really can and really does provide for His people.